


humphrey's pink fruity drink

by ivermectin



Series: d&b @ nyu! [1]
Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon diverges at s3, Conversations, Episode: s03e02 The Freshmen, F/M, Friendship, Gen, POV Blair Waldorf, Rooftop party @ NYU, minor references to blair/chuck, past Dan/Serena, this is like.. pre-slash. whatever the m/f word for that is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28727388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: In the time he’s taken to mix a drink for Blair, she’s decided that she’s going to drink Dan’s drink, and has already consumed half. She hands him back his glass, her lipstick stained across the rim like some sort of souvenir.Blair Waldorf was here.
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen & Blair Waldorf
Series: d&b @ nyu! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106012
Comments: 15
Kudos: 54





	humphrey's pink fruity drink

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i'm writing the s3 friends to lovers arc that i wish we'd canonically gotten.

Blair looks at everyone around her with distaste, feeling oddly naked without her headband. She’s already planning a sabotage, because _fuck Georgina_ , seriously, but then Dan’s hand is on her elbow, gently leading her over to the drinks table.

“Do you want anything?” he asks her, mixing something deftly and taking a quick sip. Blair watches his throat as he swallows, and then looks away, guilty.

The drink in his hands is bright pink, and, inexplicably, makes Blair think of Serena. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” she huffs.

“Oh?” Dan quirks an eyebrow at her, but mixes her the same thing quickly. She takes a tentative sip, but it’s nice, some mild strawberry lemonade mint alcohol thing that’s in part sweet and in part sting.

It’s not a Serena drink, Blair decides. She swallows the entire glass down at one go.

“Uh, okay,” Dan says. “I would suggest you pace yourself, but…”

“And _why_ would I listen to a meagre cater waiter?” Blair asks.

It’s meant to hurt, but he just smiles. “Because the meagre cater waiter’s mixing the drinks, and, quite literally, calling the shots?”

“I hate you,” Blair says. “One more?”

Dan hands her his glass to hold as he’s making her another drink. In the time he’s taken to mix a drink for Blair, she’s decided that she’s going to drink Dan’s drink, and has already consumed half. She hands him back his glass, her lipstick stained across the rim like some sort of souvenir. _Blair Waldorf was here._

“You’re a riot,” Dan says, but he smiles, and fills his own glass good naturedly. “Do you want to mingle? I can introduce you to my friends.”

 _You have friends?_ Blair wants to tease, but it’s a too-sore reminder that she doesn’t have any, so she just shakes her head instead. “Could we just sit down somewhere quiet?”

If Dan is surprised, he doesn’t show it. “Okay.”

He leads her to an isolated little corner of the roof, which is clearly a make-out spot. Uncharitably, Blair thinks that this is exactly the sort of place that Dan and Serena would’ve sneaked out to during school hours to casually fuck.

She pushes the thought of Serena out of her mind. It’s not like Dan belongs to Serena.

Sometimes it feels like their relationship – even the dregs of it, now – is more solid than her own childhood best friendship with Serena. All those years spent taking care of Serena, somehow pushed into the background for this random boy whose name she hadn’t even known until his baby sister went power hungry.

This line of thought’s making her morose, so she just takes another sip.

“You okay?” Dan asks. “You look sad.”

 _Fine, Humphrey,_ Blair says in her head, but what actually comes out of her mouth is, “I hate it here.”

Dan turns to face her, waiting for her to go on. She’d been expecting judgement, something along the lines of _yeah, Waldorf, you think I couldn’t tell?_ but he’s taking her very seriously instead, his focus on her solemn and serious.

Somehow, that makes it easier for her to talk. “I’m so out of place here, I don’t have any friends,” she begins. “And what’s more, I don’t _want_ any of these people to be friends with me. I enter every room and I’m like, what am I doing here? This isn’t where I’m supposed to be. I had a plan, Humphrey. And I … messed up, and I couldn’t fix it. Usually I can always fix it. I’m _good_ at fixing broken things! I’m _good_ at keeping to plans! But I failed that, and I’m here, and I don’t _like_ anybody here, and –” Bigger sip of the drink. She wonders if it’s going to her head (unlikely, right? she’s spent enough of her adolescence drinking and remaining in control, she’s damned if Humphrey’s pink fruity drink gets her drunk) – “I feel so insignificant. _Fuck._ ” She finishes the drink.

“That’s how I felt in high school,” Dan tells her. He leans back against the brick wall, and Blair, after a moment of contemplation, sits down right next to him. She remembers the last time she sat on the floor with this boy, joking about needing a tetanus shot.

“I probably contributed to that,” she admits. She doesn’t look at him, or at the partygoers, staring instead at the sky. “I was horrible to you.”

Dan shrugs. “I know you feel out of place, but you know you don’t have to, right? You _can_ find your people here. There _are_ people here who you’d like, if you give them a chance. I’m a part of the film club – Vanessa’s going to run for VP next semester – ”

“ _Already_?” Blair asks, startled.

“Well, yeah,” Dan says. “Sometimes the thing you get might not be the thing you want, but even within the thing that you do not want there will be other things that you _do_ want. Did that make sense?”

It had, sort of, but Blair says, “ _No,_ ” just to be contrary.

“There’s a lot of people who love film, genuinely love film,” Dan goes on. “They’re really into the classics. And there’s a book club, which is better than it sounds. For our first meeting, we all brought our favourite books and read a little paragraph of it, and everyone’s taste is _exquisite_.”

“How do you know that those are things that I’d like?” Blair asks, which is probably the wrong part of this to focus on, but it feels like the rational direction to take the conversation.

Dan takes his phone out of his pocket, and with the awkwardness of someone still learning how to check email on their phone, he scrolls and presses buttons and finally, opens something with an “ _aha!”._ He hands Blair his phone, and she holds it up to her face, squinting at the email he’s opened.

It’s from Serena, and it’s a long essay, back from the year they’d started dating.

Blair blinks a little, unsurprised at the _hey dan!!!!_ with multiple exclamation marks, a dizzy and giddy Serena hello. What she is surprised by is the text of the email, a _i know youre on the fence, but i really hope that u warm up to blair,_ and there’s more, more about Blair’s interests and the sort of person she is, _she’s the best friend i’ve had, dan, she’s been loyal to me and looked out for me when nobody else has. shes like my sister, and i’ll always love her –_ none of this is news to Blair, Serena’s told her as much, but it still hurts.

The really surprising part of the email is the next bit, listing out Blair’s favourite movies and her favourite books, and saying, _i think if u made friends with blair, not for my sake, but for yours, it would be good for you. both of you have these things in common!! common interests is a solid bedrock for a friendship, right?_

“Solid bedrock?” Blair asks, handing Dan the phone back.

Dan huffs a laugh. “Serena sends the cutest emails.”

“Serena _does,_ ” Blair says, and maybe it’s just the ghost of Serena in between them that makes this hurt, maybe it’s just the way nothing in her life is going the way she wants, but she feels herself tear up. She curses under her breath, decides _fuck it,_ huddles closer to Dan, pressing herself against his side, curling up against him.

He puts an arm around her easily, and in that moment, Blair thinks she could pretend that Dan is her best friend.

After a few minutes, he says, “Can I say something to you?”

“Didn’t you just?”

Dan ignores her, rolling his eyes. “I think it’s easy for you to resent Serena for having things easy, always getting whatever she wants handed to her on a platter.” Blair turns to glare at him, because he’s being reductive, because whatever else she feels, she _loves_ Serena, but the look in his eyes startles him – there’s something empathetic there, and she thinks maybe he really does get her and understand, so she nods at him to go on.

“Aren’t you also used to getting things handed to you, Blair?” he asks, quiet. “Here, nobody knows you’re a Waldorf, nobody _cares._ Why is it that the moment people don’t know or respect where you’re from, you feel like you have nothing going for you?”

Blair’s angry now, furiously angry. “I didn’t ask you to psychoanalyse me, just because you’ve found your crowd amongst this scruffy gang of hipster nobodies!” She gets up, pushing at him, and he’s not expecting it, so the force of it pushes him over. He ends up lying on the ground, staring at the sky, mumbling an _ouch._ But then he scowls back, and kicks at her ankle with his foot. It’s not particularly harsh, but it _is unexpected,_ and Blair’s drink (that _he_ mixed, oh shit) falls out of her hand and lands all over his shirt.

Blair’s eyes widen, a shocked _oh_ , and Dan’s expression hardens, like he’s never going to forgive her for this, but then the two of them turn around and see, to their horror, that they’ve attracted an audience. At least seven different people have their phones out.

Blair offers Dan her hand. He doesn’t take it, pulling himself up, and walking off, and she runs right after him, down the stairs.

“Dan,” she says. It hits her, suddenly, that she’s never called him by his first name before.

He turns, cautious.

“Come to my room,” she tells him.

He raises an eyebrow, looks at her like she’s suggesting something unthinkable.

“Ew, no, not like that!” Blair clarifies. “You need to change out of that shirt, and there’s traffic, you can’t possibly go all the way back to Brooklyn soaked in pink fruity drink like that.”

Dan’s expression goes more neutral, and he says, “Why do you care, Blair?”

“I’m not entirely heartless, and I don’t entirely want you to get pneumonia because I spilled a drink that you made for me on your shirt,” Blair hisses. She pulls him to her room, opens the door, enters her room and waits. “One time offer, Humphrey. Take it or leave it.”

Dan hums. “Okay.” He follows her in. She finds a hand-towel in her dresser, tosses it in his direction, while she quickly goes through her clothes, trying to find something there that’d fit Dan.

Her father’s old sweatshirt from Yale is the only thing she has. What’s one more lost dream, she reckons, tossing it at Dan, who’s already taken his shirt off, and is using the tiny towel to dab at himself awkwardly.

“Blair – ” Dan begins, holding the shirt.

Blair’s not ready for a Dan Humphrey soliloquy. She snaps, “Just take it, Humphrey.”

Dan puts it on, then, and she waits for him to leave, but instead, he sits down on the floor by her bed, leaning against her bedpost. Blair shifts, sits down next to him, leaning back against the bedframe, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says, after a moment. “You’re right to be angry, what I said to you was out of line.”

He looks like he belongs to her – the thought springs up without her doing anything to warrant such a feeling – there, in her father’s sweatshirt, his eyes big and wide and sincere, truly apologetic. For the first time since everything had gone down with college and Rachel and NYU, she feels like she has a friend.

She thinks about Chuck. _Whenever you feel bad, remember that you’re Blair Waldorf, and I’m Chuck Bass, and I love you._ And she thinks about Dan, showing her Serena’s email, trying to say in his own fumbling, inadequate way, that she was more than just Blair Waldorf, that she was _Blair,_ and maybe Blair, just Blair, was a person worth knowning.

“It wasn’t what I wanted to hear,” Blair tells him. “But I think it was what I needed to hear.”

Dan sighs. “Still, I shouldn’t have – ”

“Dan, stop,” Blair says. “ _I_ owe you an apology. Your shirt is ruined.” She inspects his sodden shirt, and then amends, “Actually, you should be thanking me. That shirt looks appalling. Did you get it from the eyesore section?”

Dan laughs, good-natured.

“Who do you think I am, if not _Blair Waldorf_?” Blair asks, putting emphasis on her name so that he understands.

Dan gives her a thoughtful look. “Shouldn’t you be telling me that? And isn’t the point of college finding out?”

Blair hums, acknowledging it. But still, she says, “Tell me.”

“You’re traditional, meticulous, organised, powerful,” Dan rattles off. “Prone to bouts of evil.”

“And you’re an upstanding citizen, I suppose?”

Dan smirks. “Naturally.”

“Those are just adjectives,” Blair complains. “I don’t need you to be a thesaurus.”

“What do you want me to say?” Dan asks.

“Why do you think someone would want to be friends with me?” she asks, softer.

“Because you’re loyal, and you’d do anything for your friends,” Dan says. “Quite literally _anything._ You’d kill for Serena, for instance.”

Blair just looks at him.

“And I get it,” he says. “I get it, because I would, too.”

Blair’s quiet for a moment, and then she says, “You should make a venn diagram. Pros and cons of being friends with Blair.”

“Why do I have homework, now?” Dan asks, but he’s smiling.

“Consider it a part of being friends with me,” Blair says. And then, for his benefit, she adds honestly, “I trust your judgement.”

Dan’s smile broadens. It doesn’t even look smug; it looks painfully earnest. At the same time, there's an obvious question in his expression.

“Fine, _fine,_ ” Blair says. “I’ll make one for you, too.”

Dan pumps at the air with his fist. _YES,_ he mouths.

“You’re so silly,” Blair says. And then thinks of the party that they very unceremoniously left, and asks him, “Want to watch a movie and order something to eat?”

And Dan smiles at her again. “Yes,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, hope you liked <3  
> feel free to hmu @bisexualdanhumphrey on tumblr :o)


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